Hawthorn and Unicorn Hair

Dracaena hadn’t got his name, but that didn’t matter. They would all be on the train soon enough, and they would meet again. She hadn’t been about the business of Hogwarts for a day yet, she thought happily, and already she had made a friend.

Mr Ollivander’s shop smelt of dust and polish, and of something else besides, which Dracaena couldn’t put a name to and didn’t care for. Her mother had got there first, and was sitting bolt upright on the only chair, with Dracaena’s list on her knee.

“Miss Malfoy,” said the old man. He had pale eyes, and he didn’t blink nearly as often as a person ought to. “I had wondered when I should see you.”

The walls were nothing but boxes, thousands of them, long and thin, and he didn’t glance at any of them. He looked at her.

“Your father was elm and dragon heartstring,” he said. “A fine wand. Elm likes an owner with presence, and it had one. Your father’s family has generally run to dragon.”

Then he turned to her mother. “And you, madam, were rowan and unicorn hair. Rowan is a guarding wood. Country people used to hang a sprig of it over the cradle and nail another above the door, and they were not wrong to. It will defend whatever its owner loves before it will trouble to defend its owner.”

“You have a sharp memory, sir,” said her mother. For a moment she was looking not at the old man but at Dracaena, as if Dracaena were still small enough for a cradle.

Dracaena decided, then and there, that she didn’t like him. His eyes were too big, and she did not like the feeling of being judged by them.

A tape measure took her measurements all on its own, which she thought a liberty, and then he began taking down boxes.

The first wand she tried shot a drawer clean out of the counter and emptied it across the floor. He whisked it out of her hand at once. The second made every box on the nearest shelf turn round and face the wall. He took that one away too, and looked pleased about it.

The third did nothing.

She waved it again, harder. It went on doing nothing, and Dracaena minded that far more than she had minded the drawer.

“No,” said Mr Ollivander, with satisfaction. “No, I thought not.”

“We have not the whole afternoon,” said her mother.

The fourth was a plain-looking thing, paler than the others, with a grain that wouldn’t lie straight and little knots all along it like the joints of a finger. She didn’t think much of it, and only took it because he was holding it out.

It was warm. That was all, at first: warm, as though somebody had been keeping it for her. Then the warmth ran up her arm to the elbow, and a stream of silver sparks poured out of the end and hung in the dusty air, dozens of them, taking their time about going out.

“Hawthorn,” said Mr Ollivander. “Ten inches. Unicorn hair.”

“Is that a good one?”

She had meant it to sound bored. She heard how it came out, and was cross with herself.

“I do not make bad ones.” He was looking at the wand, and not at her. “It is not what I should have reached for first, for a Malfoy. It is your mother’s core, not your father’s. Unicorn hair is the most faithful of the three. It does not take easily to dark work. It can be made to, but it never stops minding.”

“And the wood?” said her mother.

“A strong wood, madam, and a particular one. It does not go to a child without talent. It is what one plants round anything one means to keep, and a hawthorn hedge will outlast the house behind it.” Her mother inclined her head, but he hadn’t finished. “It is also a contrary wood. It is as good at mending as it is at harm, and it has never decided which it would rather do. I find that it goes to people who are in two minds about themselves.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Dracaena. “I know exactly who I am.”

“Of course you do,” said Mr Ollivander. “You are eleven.”

She looked at him hard to see whether he was laughing at her. He wasn’t.

Her mother counted seven Galleons out on to the counter and said that it was very suitable.

“Come, dear one.”

“I didn’t like him,” said Dracaena, once they were out in the street.

“Nobody does, darling. One goes to him anyway.”

She carried the wand herself, the length of the Alley. Hawthorn and unicorn hair, she thought. Well. It would have to do.